Spooncraft

Hunters are deadly marksmen, capable of bringing their enemies down from a distance with bows or rifles. Skilled survivalists, they can track enemies or lay traps to damage and entrap their foes. Hunters also possess a primal connection to the beasts of Azeroth, capable of taming and training them to keep as loyal guardians. Wearing light to medium armor, hunters can also dual wield weapons in combat, fighting beside their pets in battle.

The Hunter has been revamped in Wrath of the Lich King and now can be one of the most brutal damage dealing classes in the game. Master of ranged combat and the ultimate pet class, the hunter can debuff a character, dish out copious amounts of single target and AOE damage, and can even tank certain monsters and bosses with his pet. The three trees are the Beast mastery, Marksman, and Survival trees.

Beast Mastery: BM Hunters put all of their punch into their pets. All hunter have pets mind you but only beast master hunters can tame the most exotic and rare animals in Azeroth. Giant devilsaurs (T-Rex), Corehounds (2-headed dog beasts), chimaeras, and even massive Wooly Rhinos are just a few of the beasts a BM hunter can unleash. BM hunters make for the best leveling spec in the game. They can solo almost everything that you will come across on Azeroth, and their pets are much more rugged than the typical hunter’s. Beast Master hunters can also incite their pets into a frenzy and themselves aswell in the process making them invulnerable to any form of crowd control spells or abilities that enemy players can use against them in PVP.

Marksman: Marks hunters are ranged damage monsters. These hunters excel at ranged combat and although they too have pets like all hunters, their specialty is with arrow and ordenance. Marksmanship hunters deal the most ranged damage with their weapons than all other hunters, they can also cause some incredible levels of damage in a group or raid setting and with the new Chimaera shot, can debuff enemy players or burst high levels of damage in an instant.

Survival: Survival hunters are somewhat of an anomoly. They are the masters of melee attacks, tracking, and targets. Survival hunters are quite possibly the hardest hunters to lock down and kill in PVP. A survival hunter can get out of almost any bad situation where an enemy has broken through and managed to get into melee combat range thus making the hunter have to abandon his stronger ranged damage. They also have access to lock and load which will cause the next 2 shots used by the hunter to be free, cause no cooldown, and cost no ammo after the target has been successfully trapped or sometimes while serpent sting deals period damage. The new 51pt survival talent is Explosive shot which does good damage to the main target and then ebgins to explode causing splash damage to all other targets near the first.

Wowhead has a really great talent calculator where you can experiment with new builds for your Hunter.